About Us

The Greater Arkansas Interfaith Network (GAIN) is a network of citizens interested in just, joyful, and sustainable communities which include and embrace a multiplicity of faiths, cultures, philosophies, and identities. We believe diversity makes the whole richer.

We sponsor and support many projects: social gatherings, discussion groups, personal mentoring, music festivals. Our aim is to help people grow in mind, body, and spirit and to help build multi-faith communities that are creative, compassionate, participatory, socially just, humane to animals, and ecologically wise — with no one left behind. We borrow this idea from Martin Luther King. Jr., who is one of our spiritual mentors.

As a multifaith network we take our understanding of the various faiths from the Harvard Pluralism Project, which lists seventeen kinds of faith in the American landscape: Bahai, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Humanist, Muslim, Native American, Pagan, and others. Our understanding of faith includes people are spiritually interested but not religiously affiliated.

We understand spirituality as an essential dimension of wellness and community well-being. Our understanding of the spiritual side of life is non-sectarian; it comes from the pioneers of multi-faith spirituality at Spirituality and Practice. For us as for our friends at Spirituality and Practice, spirituality includes many moods and emotions that can contribute to wellness: attention, being present, creativity, connectedness, courage, devotion, enthusiasm, faith, forgiveness, gratitude, hospitality, imagination, justice, listening, meaning, nurturing, openness, peace, play, questing, reverence, silence, transformation, unity, vision, wonder, X (the mystery of life), yearning, and zest for life.